Month: July 2009

Last time I checked, my initial Face book announcement that I was moving to Glasgow had sixty comments and 35 “likes”; the FB link to my explanation on this blog had thirty-five comments and four “likes”; the blog entry had thirty comments; another fifteen or twenty people congratulated me on my FB Wall; and over at the Warcraft guild forums, another twenty comments congratulated me (and Hronk insulted my gear, as usual). (I’m specially delighted by Elliot’s “wall of grats crits me for 6k.”) I know that there’s some duplication — I’m not figuring out the number of unique commenters or factoring out my responses — but I get all weepy when I think of everyone bothering to wish me well. You’re a bunch of sweeties, and your kindness underscores the stuff I theorize and write about the our identities being strongly interconnected, online as well as offline.
 
During hard times, I have sometimes felt like packing it in; Margaret then prods me to acknowledge that a lot of people I love and respect hold me in high regard. Well, she now has so much evidence that I have no excuse for dispiritedness, ever. And my heart is full to brimming with joy about our mutually beginning a new adventure. Thanks very, very, very much, everyone. Bless your hearts.

So far, the leading candidates for my mobile communication needs are (a) jailbreak the iPhone, or (b) break the AT&T contract and just get a basic cell phone and plan from Three (thanks for the advice, Catherine!). I’m not sure how piratical I feel about the iPhone, though it would be excellent to not have to keep track of two distinct electronic devices.
 
The second topic in my international-transition enigma-thon concerns banking. Since Margaret will be living in the U.S., and we will retain some assets (and some very significant bills) on this side, what’s the most sensible way to order our financial lives with minimal exchange-rate losses? I gather that banks in the U.K. don’t pay any heed to credit ratings based on U.S. history (can’t imagine why that might be the case), and I won’t be able to transfer a significant lump sum when I arrive. This may make getting a U.K. credit card impossible. Any recommendations on a way of banking that maximizes ease-of-transfer to U.S. sources and also gets any possible benefit from having been a responsible financial citizen for thirty years or so?

Michael Jensen gave a mind-blowing talk at Association of Aermican Univesity Presses conference; although I don’t think I was ever far-sighted enough to frame my own arguments in terms of global ecological catastrophe, his address captures and amplifies the urgency I try to stir up when it comes to reconfiguring the publishing industry. Please, world, listen to him! (Hat tip to Alex Halavais for the link.)

So, first question: I’ve had an iPhone for a year and a half, and am well-pleased with it. But I can’t simply hop over to Glasgow and keep using it, due to the onerous restrictions and back-breaking roaming charges that the telcos impose.
 
I know I can go to AT&T and ask that they cancel the remainder of my contract with htem, so long as I can prove that I’m actually moving out of AT&T’s empire. The quetsion is, What then do I do with the iPhone itself, and what do I do about mobile communications in Glasgow?
 
Option one might be to carry the iPhone around as an overequipped iPod Touch, useful in wifi-equipped locations (such as the University campus) but otherwise ust good for music, camera, and games. I’d then find a cheap mobile solution in the U.K. for phone and for texting with Margaret.
 
Option two would be to hand down the iPhone to someone else in the family, and start fresh in Glasgow. Although I’m an Apple enthusiast, I’m not opposed to experimenting with an Android phone, if there’s a plausible (and affordable) candidate.
 
I could also try to sell the iPhone, for that matter.
 
Option three would be just to start up a new iPhone contract with O2, using the same unit. Would I be able to swap SIMs in and out, so that I could use it with AT&T on a per-use basis here, and with O2 under contract there?
 
Option four is the one that I haven’t even thought up yet, but my savvy Net friends know right away.
 
I’m sure that someone out there has a better handle on this than I. We need to keep this solution affordable, because we have weighty expenses coming up; but Margaret and I also need to be able to keep in touch, and we’ve gotten accustomed to texting on our current plan. And mobile web use has become part of my daily life (I’d be embarrassed to admit this, except that it constitutes part of my vocation as a theo-technologian, so I can abashedly rationalize it.) But the experience of moving overseas underscores the absurdity of a telecommunications system where we pay so much to uphold barriers to useability.

Golly, I’ve been deeply touched by the out-pouring of comments here and on Facebook. We were already looking forward to Glasgow, but by sharing your enthusiasm and your joy, y’all have raised the pitch of our anticipation to an entirely new register.
 
Unfortunately, my flat for the first year (at least) will be small — tiny, by U.S. standards, especially for someone as far along as I — but we’ll see if we can work up to a space with adequate guest room. And even in my tiny flat for this year, there‘s a sofa-bed.
 
Much to do, now, and a whole mountain of questions that I’ll begin asking in separate threads. Again, though, my heart thrills at the awareness that y’all are with us in this adventure, and I’m all the more thankful that the internet affords us an easy way to keep in touch.

This morning, I received word that the Head of Department had requested that a contract be drawn up in my name. While it’s conceivable that something might go awry at this point, it all seems secure enough for me to tell my visitors that beginning August 1, I will join the faculty of the University of Glasgow’s Department of Theology and Religious Studies.
 
My biblical studies colleagues will be Yvonne Sherwood, Sarah Nicholson, and Ward Blanton; they’ve been marvelously encouraging and excited about my joining them, and it will be a royal treat to join forces with them. I gather that there’s some curricular revision in the offing, which may afford a chance for us to tailor the biblical courses to an integrated, harmonious whole. Plus, there’ll be doctoral students and eager undergrads along with the ministry students I’ve grown accustomed to teaching. The University was founded in 1451 by a papal bull — now, that’s historic!
 
Glasgow is a terrific city (based on my six days’ acquaintance with it), and there’s much to be said for living in the U.K. I’ll enjoy the chance to interact more richly with my colleagues in the U.K. and Europe, plus I’ll be living in my ancestral homeland, and the home terrain of Gary Turner and Euan Semple, perhaps getting acquainted in the physical dimensions with the tech community Over There. Maybe Will Crawley or David Efird will have a reason to visit.
 
For the coming year, I’ll have to leave Margaret and my family behind. That will be hard, especially after having had such an intensely lovely time with them all at Si’s wedding, but we’ll see what we can afford by way of visiting back and forth. After this year, we plan for Margaret to come live in Glasgow while we see what we can find for work for her.
 
It’s intensely exciting for what’s to come, and poignantly sad for what I’m leaving behind. The moving/storing/releasing process strikes my great weakness, with really very little time in which to arrange all these matters. Luckily, I have a flat already arranged; it’s furnished, and within walking distance of the university. And people are sending me the names of relations and friends in Glasgow; if I were to see them all, my social calendar would be full for weeks.
 
A great many people have been praying and hoping and rooting and encouraging and reaching out over the past year and a half; I have been upheld and sustained by your concern, and I can’t thank you all enough. I hope that years to come afford to me the chance to do some good on behalf of other struggling job-seekers. Please remember the unemployed and the under-employed, the homeless and the desperate, whose hearts and hopes have been abraded by the harsh economies of the twenty-first century world. Though Margaret and I have been pulled back from the brink of that steep hillside, we experienced enough of it to keep us mindful of how fortunate we are.
 
For now, I’m gathering my wits and figuring out how to make the intercontinental transition — because in a few weeks, I’m moving to Glasgow!
 

Open source software making inroads in academic administration (yay!).
 
Gary Turner will leave MSFT to serve as MD (“Paging Dr. Turner”?) at Xero. Fond memories, and best wishes from a compatriot in the Transitions Department!
 

 
And speaking of long-ago tech comrades, Marc Canter is leaving the Bay and moving to Ohio, where he’ll be working to put his ahead-of-the-curve visions into play for Cleveland and environs. The article ends by quoting Marc: “I don’t think they have any idea [what’s about to hit them].” I’ll bet that’s right.

I constantly see instances of the rhetorical gesture wherein an author or preacher claims that a whole page-worth of intense connotation, allusion, ramification, implication, history, and philosophical baggage are all implied by a single word. “It’s all in there,” they’ll say, or “With one word, he calls to mind the whole….”
 
I have a hard time believing that such writers and preachers actually believe what they’re saying. I suspect that they draw all these correlations, think they’re cool and provocative, think that the author whose work they’re discussing was terribly smart to have chosen a word that might trigger all these associations, and think that so neat an array of correlations must somehow be decisively attributed to the word itself — rather than to the interpreter, or to the (antecedent) writer’s imagination of what subsequent readers might think.
 
Is it truly so very weak to say, “Theses allusions, connotations, and so on fit such-and-such a context”? Or, “This word resonates with these other discourses”? Or, “Related words appear in these comparable circumstances”? Why do commentators feel obliged to ascribe intrinsic characteristics to words, when broader experience suggests (to me) that people rarely use words with any but a casual, conventional sense of what they’re doing?
 
It’s entirely possible for us to make warranted inferences about ways that a text coheres with other texts, contexts, usages, discourses, and so on, without making the (false) claim that “all of that” is somehow packed into one word. No, no, no, it isn’t.

The Times reports that John Henry Cardinal Newman, a theologian for whom I harbor a certain affinity, has passed muster for beatification. Sometime moderately soon, the Holy See will officially designate him Blessed John Henry Newman.
 
Plus, it turns out that this saintly man is good for backs. I will bear that in mind next time my spasms flare up.

We didn’t do anything particularly constructive today. We just rested and did things we wanted to. It felt good — we may do the same tomorrow.